Living With Conversion Disorder
Pseudoseizures and self-gaslighting
Introduction
Before I was diagnosed with conversion disorder, life seemed bleak and difficult. I had a not-so-great relationship with my mother, and since my father died, the bitterness in our relationship was ramped up, and although it’s peculiar to hear that a mother finds her son abhorrent, it’s what I went through, and everyone in my family watched and condoned as I was disparaged. My mother was always austere and wanted me to be perfectly servile, and that made my childhood trying because I could never win her over. I could barely focus at school because I was always thinking about all the ways that I had disappointed people or how other people hurt me, and it made me overly empathic.
Thesis Statement
When bothers were on my mind, there were fewer things I could focus on, and I couldn’t read big novels like Paradise Lost by Milton, The Idiot by Dostoyevsky, or Moby Dick by Melville well at 17 years old, but I would re-read them after I found mental stability. Although I was among the better-performing in school when I was 17, it didn’t stay that way for long. In no way did I anticipate that having pseudoseizures would be my cry for help, and I never properly acknowledged that no one would come to my rescue and that I had to fight for mental clarity with drugs.
My Genteel Upbringing
My mom used to say that my father was a genius, she said he could solve hard mathematical problems in his head, but he died when I was young, so I never knew how smart he was, but I knew he was successful and uxorious. My sister and I were raised in a mollycoddle fashion, so we were always given what we wanted, and we were usually materially over-indulged as kids, but our emotional worlds weren’t cherished. I remember my dad bought boxes of chocolate that filled the whole refrigerator once, and we could have a bar whenever we wanted, but it wasn’t always like that, he would change after we grew up a bit as if he realized that spoiling children is not the best way to raise them, and it was true, my sister and I were insulated from pain.
My First Mental Breakdown
The first time that I was acutely hurt was in school, and it was during assembly, and my class had just returned from a field trip to a museum, and I was spontaneously asked to tell everyone about it, but I said the time when we had lunch wrong, and here, when we speak English (we use English at school), we use the 12 hour system, but when we speak Swahili, we use our own unique hour system (for example, 1 PM would be 7 PM). Everyone laughed at me, and I was petrified, such that I dissociated from my body, and the world looked cloudy as though I was looking through glass, and it was then that I experienced my first episode of depersonalization/derealization and hand tremors, and I couldn’t hold a cup without spilling the porridge in it, and many students would stare at me and look sorry in the refectory.
What’s It Like to Live In Tanzania:
1. Schooling
School in Tanzania has always been tough, so it might not be a good testament to my intellect because it involves a lot of cramming. I was born and raised in Tanzania, and every Tanzanian knows that we have one of the toughest goes in life. Our curriculum is extensive and covers the Indian syllabus as well as our own and a variety of other sources, so it’s important that you learn a lot about a topic to have a chance at getting a passing grade, and that has left many brilliant people with an inauspicious life. We even still cane children in schools whenever they’re indisciplined or tardy.
2. History
The Arab Slave Trade that occurred here lasted for 1500 years while in West Africa, the Atlantic Slave Trade lasted 400 years, so we had no time to establish kingdoms that were built by trading, unlike the Mali empire in West Africa, under Mansa Musa, the richest man to have ever lived, according to TED-Ed Youtube videos, and so, we never had an extensive rich history, and it leaves me despondent thinking about it.
3. The Lack of Amenities
There are power outages sometimes in some areas of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s commercial city, and we call it a “mgao”, where certain wards are left without power for a full day, and they’d alternate power outages amongst different wards, and it’s bound to happen at least once every two weeks. Most people use mobile phones rather than smartphones. Wages are cripplingly low here, and a vast majority of us live under the UN World Bank poverty line of 2.15 US dollars a day, and we are among the top ten lowest-valued currencies in Africa.
4. Exploitation and Discrimination
The gemstone tanzanite can only be mined in Tanzania, but India is the leading exporter of the product. Tanzania is one of the few places in the world where female genital mutilation is still rampant as well as the killing of albinos, and it is illegal to be gay here as it is punishable with up to life in prison; so we know a thing or two about pain.
The Turning Point
My father was the sole breadwinner of the family, and when he passed, I was scared, it seemed like I had to let go of some of my dreams. The passing left my mother depressed, she said, but I don’t believe her, and she would lash out at me because of her mood, but she was never maudlin. I’ve come to believe my mother was envious of my father’s intellect as she was always manipulative and disparaging towards him, but he would stay sweet.
The Kind of Person My Father Was
It was difficult coming to the realization that my father would let his children be raised by a termagant, it seemed hypocritical, and it’s left me traumatized. My mother would even adamantly be disapproving of homosexuality, among other things, even though I was gay, and my whole family knew, but she would pretend she didn’t get how it came to be so she could slander me in front of everyone.
The Antics of My Mother
Every time I’d try to defend myself in the midst of my mother’s bullying, and that would involve getting angry, she would gaslight me and call me insane, and my psychiatrists would agree. One psychiatrist even pathologized me for being gay, and he said that I had “gender dysmorphic disorder”, even though I don’t identify as transgender or transexual. I would come to find out that one of my psychiatrists had an intimate relationship with my mother, and this was after my dad died and when she was getting treated for depression. I’d catch her being intimate with several married men throughout the decade as when I found messages of porn sent by my psychiatrist to my mother.
Coming to Terms With the Abuse
I remember my mother waking up as early as I woke up for school just to criticize me for being slow about getting ready, and sometimes, she would hit me, and she ramped up her menacing after I became a junior because I miraculously did incredibly well at school as a sophomore, when I was 15 years old and still unaware of the full scale of the betrayal, and she wasn’t inexorably in my thoughts then. I believe she wanted me to fail at school so that my sister could outperform me, and it became clear that she was only using my father for his genetics, and I got that she loathed him so much that she saw me as something other than herself because I was a boy, or maybe because I represented my father’s proclivities, or she reveled in the fact that she was so evil that she could torment her son because I refused to turn to the dark side, hence the name, “conversion disorder,” I speculate.
How the Abuse Shaped My Life
All my closest mates were reminiscent of my relationship with my mother, and my so-called “best friend” would even spit at my face once as I tried to cop a feel of his back because I was told that he was gay and interested; he was straight, and we would not talk after he spat at my face when I was a sophomore, but we would conjoin in senior year, and we‘d be inseparable after I slowly learned to hate myself, and no matter what he did, I’d continue to let him whittle at my self-esteem, and it was clear that he was in my life to destroy me, and when I recuperated, I decided it best if we broke up.
My First Time Being Hospitalized
I remember the first time I was hospitalized, I opined that I wanted to kill myself in my psychiatrist’s office, and that led to him calling a guard to drag me to the psychiatric ward, and there, they tied my hands and feet with rope, in the same posture Jesus was in on the cross, and they’d inject a sedating drug, and I would be knocked out for hours, and it would be torture when I woke up, and I was with the acutely mentally ill, and there, I was held for three days as is required by the law for suicidal ideation, and sometimes, the mentally ill would hit me. The parallels with Frances Farmer’s life we unnerving.
For the Depression
Fluoxetine (a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) was the first psychiatric drug I was prescribed, for depression, but it wasn’t effective, I was still brooding, and it led to side effects like delayed orgasms, heartburn (especially when I didn’t take it with food), and weight loss. My psychiatrist also suggested adjunct therapy, but the therapist would gaslight me, and I quickly stopped seeing her. There were modest cognitive enhancing effects, but nothing that could drastically improve my grades. There was a huge improvement in my mood, and life seemed a bit more vivid than I was used to.
For the Rage
For the anger, my psychiatrist prescribed haloperidol (a first-generation antipsychotic). Haloperidol has extrapyramidal side effects and caused severe drowsiness, visual disturbances, and depersonalization/derealization disorder, and those made sure that I couldn’t stay awake during the day or function properly. I remember I also temporarily developed Alice in Wonderland syndrome, drooling as I slept, and tardive dyskinesia, which led to me quickly discontinuing haloperidol use, and I was then put on risperidone (a second-generation antipsychotic), which has less extrapyramidal side effects, but the drowsiness was severe, such that I slept through lessons at school. I was always getting in trouble with teachers because of my fatigue. One day, I got too intoxicated on marijuana (I smoked rarely then), and I took risperidone to help me sleep, and when I woke up, I had muscle aches, and I was more sleepy than risperidone usually makes me.
The Worst Side Effects of Psychoactive Medications
I was prescribed trihexyphenidyl (an anticholinergic drug) for the extrapyramidal side effects, but it caused severe problems like visual disturbances, drowsiness, cognitive impairment, and dry mouth, and I would later find out that the drug consorts with an increased risk of dementia, so I stopped taking them, and I would also discontinue risperidone and fluoxetine use as well, and be prescribed lithium carbonate instead as my anger issues were reminiscent of bipolar disorder, however, I had not yet had a full manic episode, but I had gotten hypomanic before, and so, I was diagnosed with bipolar II, and though lithium controlled rage as much as risperidone and haloperidol did, I did not notice any improvements in cognition, especially in concentration, which I coveted.
The Drugs I Was on Before Graduating
For lithium, I had to get blood tests several times a month to make sure that plasma levels weren’t toxic, but at some point, I started to develop diabetes insipidus from regular use, such that I was peeing every after one hour. I was also prescribed methylphenidate later on, used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and although it did help with concentration at first, tolerance grew quickly, and the drug was ineffective after a month as I kept on procrastinating, but it also caused anger management bothers, loss of appetite, and anxiety. I was still at ordinary levels of school during all this and I graduated with C grades in mathematics, geography, Swahili, history, chemistry, biology, physics, and civics, and with a B grade in English; that’s equivalent to getting above 54% for a C and above 64% for a B.
My First Pseudoseizure
I remember the first time I had a pseudoseizure, I had just completed ordinary levels of school, and I was to start advanced levels with prospects of becoming a psychiatrist, and I was taking physics, chemistry, biology, general studies, and applied mathematics. The pseudoseizure was provoked by contention between my mother and I, and my concentration suffered more gravely as a result of it. My mother looked genuinely worried that I had epilepsy, but I would later find out that she was being hypocritical after I read text messages between her and my psychiatrist, and this was after the pseudoseizures stopped, but they knew it wasn’t epilepsy, everyone knew, except me.
Bullying At School
Quickly, I learned that I couldn’t perform well at advanced levels, and I was always bottom-ranked. Everyone thought I was peculiar because I didn’t understand how to do well, that I’d have to put all of my focus on school, but I was never good at fading memories, and I was scared I’d lose a part of myself, and I thought memory capacity increases as you age, and I was waiting for a growth spurt. At some point, a bully caught wind of me and got everyone in class to start glaring at me whenever a teacher wasn’t in, and it was ominous, and at the height of the anxiety, I had another pseudoseizure, and although I didn’t lose consciousness, pee myself, or bite my tongue, I wholly believed that I had epilepsy, even though many signs pointed to it being conversion disorder, and I was 18 years old then.
Panic Disorder
The first anti-seizure medication I was put on was a benzodiazepine, clonazepam, but benzodiazepines are also associated with cognitive impairment, specifically, anterograde amnesia, but I didn’t know that at the time, and so, I was on them for a year, and when I started advanced levels, I would have difficulty with remembering what I studied, but I just thought that I’d maxed out my memory. Clonazepam is anxiolytic, and I would get panic attacks during withdrawal, so I administered it daily. I was put on paroxetine (a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) and propranolol (a beta blocker used to prevent heart attacks) for the panic attacks, and I discontinued clonazepam use because the cognitive dysfunction had gotten severe enough for me to notice, and the pseudoseizures didn’t stop, and because paroxetine had strong anticholinergic effects, like trihexyphenidyl, I had to stop taking paroxetine as well.
Getting Tested For Epilepsy
At some point, my psychiatrist ordered that I have an electroencephalogram (EEG) test and a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan to see if there was something in my head that could have caused the pseudoseizures, and the results of the tests came out clear, but I wasn’t responding to any of the medications, as I kept having pseudoseizures in class. My psychiatrist suggested that there must be “something wrong with my brain” and that it could be “too tiny to detect”, so he got me on more robust antiseizure medication. I started out with carbamazepine, and though the side effects were minimal, it worsened my cognition, and I would later realize that carbamazepine use led to verbal working memory deficits (I couldn’t find words), so I had to discontinue use because I was performing worse at school.
Why I Took Antiepileptics
I was then put on lamotrigine, and though I experienced fewer cognitive side effects in comparison to carbamazepine, I only noticed: loss of appetite, emotional bluntness, and skin rashes, but I didn’t notice any attenuation of the pseudoseizures or cognitive enhancement, and at this time, I started realizing that I could control when the pseudoseizures were happening, and it began to dawn on me that I may not have epilepsy, but I was desperate to find the drug that could rescue my cognition, and so, I stopped taking lamotrigine and was after a new antiseizure medication. In retrospect, I realize that antiseizure medications may be one of the worst classes of drugs to look for a cognitive enhancer because they turn down excitability.
My Dance With Death
I was prescribed sodium valproate right after discontinuing lamotrigine use. When I was administering sodium valproate, I was petrified, it caused severe symptoms of liver failure: I was vomiting so much that I lost 10 kilograms in two weeks, my skin darkened, I had diarrhea, I rapidly lost huge chunks of my hair (but most of it would grow back), I couldn’t eat anything for about a month, and I was really scared that I was going to die. I would also notice white scarring on my scrotum and scalp, which was consorted with scarring alopecia and I could feel tenderness, itchiness, and hair miniaturizing around my temples. I would later google drug interactions, and I found out that lamotrigine and sodium valproate co-administration could lead to a lethal condition known as Steven-Johnson syndrome, and I was appalled after seeing images of people with the symptomatology.
Conspiracy
Sodium valproate alone could be responsible for severe liver toxicity. I would also find out that sodium valproate affects chromosome functioning and children born from mothers who administered sodium valproate were malformed. It would be the last time I went to a psychiatrist’s office for over a year, and the pseudoseizures stopped after taking sodium valproate. I would later come to find out that my mother talked to my psychiatrist about sodium valproate, and she would reveal it to me herself, and I feared that it was an attempt to murder me.
My Final Grades
When my final grades came out, I found out that I had Es in physics, chemistry, biology, and general studies, and an F in applied mathematics, and in advanced levels, that’s equivalent to getting above 39% for an E and below 35% for an F, which means that I barely passed, but I don’t have grades high enough to get me into university, and I’d have to get a diploma first, which takes three years, and that left me despondent and suicidal, and I still haven’t decided if I want to get that diploma or if I should continue trying out writing on Medium, and ask a friend in the US to sign up for the partnership program for me. At that point, I had also developed a daily habit of marijuana smoking, and though that didn’t help my grades, it surely helped my mental health because I believe I would have committed suicide without it.
My Habit of Marijuana Smoking
My rage would get worse whenever I tried to quit marijuana, and those fights, which would escalate quickly, would lead to me getting sent to the psychiatric ward, with mania being the diagnosis, and trauma being the cause. My psychiatrist insisted that I quit smoking marijuana, that it was damaging to my brain, and was responsible for inducing mania. During one of my biggest fights with my mom, which involved me brutally assaulting her and breaking china, I was sent to the psychiatric ward for 11 days, and I was prescribed risperidone, clonazepam, and amitriptyline. I was then diagnosed with bipolar I disorder and conversion disorder, and that was the first time I was prescribed amitriptyline, of all the over fifteen times I was admitted to the ward.
How Amitriptyline Saved My Life
I could finally concentrate while on amitriptyline, my mood was elevated, I was convinced I could perform well at school, I had motivation, and I could finally read! My doctor even said that every patient he prescribed amitriptyline challenged him when he said they should stop taking the medication. I quickly researched the drug and I learned that it was neuroprotective and a potent cognitive enhancer, and it would be the only drug to save me, however, it didn’t solve the rage, and I’d have to be put on risperidone for that, and I found that co-administration of amitriptyline and risperidone attenuated the sedative properties of risperidone, but it would take chronic use, and finally, I could function like everyone else. And I was bitter about why my psychiatrist didn’t prescribe amitriptyline sooner.
Rehab
After assaulting my mother, everyone in the neighborhood stayed the same, they would talk to me like they used to as if nothing happened, and that was always what happened, but things had escalated to new heights of hostility. My psychiatrist decided that I go to rehab for three months, and I re-read all my favorite books there. When I came back, I was shrewd, I wasn’t ever brooding, and I owe it all to amitriptyline and risperidone, but I would later be put on quetiapine instead of risperidone, and I found that quetiapine is a better cognitive enhancer than risperidone. I stopped smoking marijuana, and I could live without it.
Conclusions
It’s hard to reminisce when you’ve had a life like mine, it changes you and your values; it makes you assiduous and empathic, and trying only to do your best for other people, but little for yourself, and although I have many regrets, and my relationship with my mother is still as bitter as it‘s always been, it’s nice to know that I’ve got a handle on my head, and now, I can get back to pursuing my dreams, even though they changed, and even though there is pain, I’m more interested in the silver lining, and it feels good to be amiable and healthy, and I wish for other people with similar stories to get to that place as well, and I’ll do what I can to help.
